I put my head back on the pillow, not really trying to get back to sleep. I couldn’t, and anyway, what’s so great about sleep? Sleep is where the nightmares are.
What a way to see the new year in!
End of nightmare?
Well, maybe.
And maybe not.
CHAPTER ONE
I was sitting in front of the TV, flipping the pages of the latest bulletin, when Zeno knocked on the door. He came in without waiting for an invitation.
He looked over my shoulder to see what was on the screen.
“It’s a holiday,” he said. “You’re supposed to be taking a break, no?”
“You have holidays on Calicos?” (It was one of those silly thoughts that just seemed suddenly odd, for no good reason. Somehow, I hadn’t thought of alien beings, however nearly human, having holidays.)
“Of course,” he replied. “Even this holiday—the beginning of the new year.”
“But not Christmas?”
“No,” he said. “Not Christmas.” He would have smiled, I’m sure, if he could. Anatomy, ever the comedian, had made sure that from a human point of view, he always looked doleful. He had a range of expressions, of course, that meant a lot to his own kind, but by our criteria they only varied his mien from slightly doleful all the way to extremely doleful. It was appropriate, in its way. His view of the world was not redolent with what you or I would call joi de vivre. He was dark green in color, with diamond-shaped scales distributed in a tough tegument, and a few eccentric cartilaginous extrusions here and there, but apart from that he was ordinary enough.
“It’s not work,” I assured him. “I’m just catching up on the latest squabbles between Biochemistry and Taxonomy. We’re bound to be called upon to referee. Genetics always has to arbitrate, in the long run. Good party last night, wasn’t it?”
I had to admire the way I’d slipped it in like that. I had to begin investigations quickly.
“I’m not sure,” he replied cautiously. “It’s difficult to know where goodness resides, from the human point of view.”
Zeno wasn’t his “real” name. It was just the name he’d adopted in order to live among humans. He sometimes said that he’d rather have selected the name of a more recent philosopher, but that “Schopenhauer” was too cumbersome and after studying the implications he’d regretfully declined the opportunity of calling himself “Kant.”
“I think I may have had too much to drink,” I said. “My memories are a little hazy.”
That was playing safe. Always construct an alibi.
“That’s strange,” he said. “I thought that you drank very moderately, and that you retired early to bed.”
I frowned. That didn’t sound too hopeful. Perhaps, for the period of the lost memory, I wasn’t at the party at all. If so, then where the hell was I? And what had I been doing?
“I see Scarlatti thinks he’s got a virus hook-up in some of his mice,” I said, pointing to the page of the Bulletin that was on the screen. “More power to the paranoids, I suppose.”
Zeno accepted the change of subject gracefully. “I don’t think the mice are suffering too terribly,” he said. “Last time I spoke to Scarlatti they were in the best of health. Nevertheless, it’s a serious matter. Cross-systemic infection isn’t to be taken lightly, even as a remote possibility. However....”
He cleared his throat politely, and I remembered that he must have come for a purpose. After all, as he said, it was a holiday. He hadn’t dropped in to discuss nucleic acid ubiquity or the progress of the induction experiments.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Schumann wants to see you.”
“Why couldn’t he use the phone?”
“He did. He called me. He wants to see us both.”
For a moment, I’d been very worried. Now I was just worried. At least, if it was something I’d done, Schumann didn’t yet know it was me. I swallowed anxiously. What on Earth could I have done in an hour, late on New Year’s Eve, that could have attracted the attention of the director so quickly? But then, we weren’t on Earth, were we? We were on Sule, where a man who does strange things and fails to remember them the next morning might be a very dangerous man to have around.
“Okay,” I said. I switched off the display and stood up. Zeno was taller than me by about a head. Whether he was exceptionally tall by the standards of his own people, or whether the Calicoi are a race of giants, I didn’t know. Zeno was the only one I’d ever met—the only one on Sule. There were half a dozen Calicoi in Marsbase, and maybe three times as many on Earth, but his was a unique position. He was the only alien helping us in our studies of alien biology. He was very useful, not just because he was good at his job, but also because he had a whole tradition of scientific inquiry to draw on that was differently directed than our own. Without Zeno as collaborator, I couldn’t have been anywhere near as successful as I was. We were a good team.
“What kind of holidays do you have, on Calicos?” I asked, as we walked along the corridor toward the administration section.
“Are there different kinds?” he asked. “I suppose there are, in a way. They become established by tradition—it is far easier to make a holiday than to cancel it. Like yours, our days of rest are the legacy of the past. Some are religious festivals, some commemorate important historical events.”
One could never cease to marvel at the parallels that could be drawn between the Calicoi and ourselves. It was easy to think of them as human beings in funny costumes—caricatures of ourselves. Their world, it seemed, had so very much in common with our own that they might have been the creation of some satirist, except that the satire lacked any significance. Biochemical destiny, it seemed, had neither a sense of humor nor a didactic purpose.
It wasn’t far to Schumann’s office—Admin was right next to Residential, in the other direction from the lab complexes. Organizers don’t like to have to walk too far to work. His assistant gestured us through with hardly a glance in our direction, but it seemed that she wasn’t really on duty. She’d just been called in for some particular task, and was obviously keen to get away again.
“See,” I murmured to Zeno, “we humans long since ceased to take holidays seriously. That’s why we’re the galaxy’s master race. I bet your lot still take Sundays off.”
He didn’t have time for a reply. We were already in the great man’s presence.
Schumann was going bald, and his beard had long since turned white. It was probably the worry that did it. He didn’t look as if he desperately wanted to be in his office either.
“Something’s come up,” he said.
I gritted my teeth, and waited for the bad news.
“A signal from FTL Earth Spirit came in forty minutes ago,” he went on. “They have clearance from Earth to pick up supplies here. They’re requisitioning food, equipment—and you.”
I just couldn’t take it in. Whatever I’d been ready for, it wasn’t news like this.
Zeno must have been taken by surprise, too. At least, he said nothing. We both waited for Schumann to go on.
“If it’s any consolation to you,” he